car 的词源

“车上自带发动机和动力源的车辆”，1895年，来自 auto- + car。

Which is it to be? We observe that the London Times has lent the weight of its authority to the word "autocar," which it now prints without the significant inverted commas but with a hyphen, "auto-car." We believe that the vocable originated with a journal called the Hardwareman, which succeeded in obtaining the powerful support of the Engineer for its offspring. As for ourselves, being linguistic purists, we do not care for hybrid constructions—"auto" is Greek, while "car" is Latin and Celtic. At the same time, such clumsy phrases as "horseless carriages," "mechanical road carriages," and "self-propelled vehicles" are not meeting with general favour. Why not therefore adopt the philogically sound "motor-car," which could be run into a single word, "motorcar"? [The Electrical Engineer, Dec. 20, 1895]

到底该用哪个词呢？ 我们注意到，《伦敦时报》已经开始支持“autocar”这个词，现在它不再使用明显的引号，而是用连字符“auto-car”。我们相信，这个词最初是由一本名为 Hardwareman 的杂志创造的，并成功获得了 Engineer 的强力支持。至于我们这些语言纯粹主义者，并不喜欢这种混合构词——“auto”是希腊语，而“car”则是拉丁语和凯尔特语。同时，“无马车”、“机械道路车”和“自 propulsion 车辆”这样的笨拙表达并未受到普遍欢迎。那么，为什么不采用语音上更合理的“motor-car”，并将其合并为一个词“motorcar”呢？[《电气工程师》，1895年12月20日]

可与 automobile 对比。

也可以写作 box-car，指的是“用于运输货物的大型封闭铁路车厢”，这个词出现在1856年，属于美式英语，来源于 box (n.1) 和 car。